


Where the Sun Ends

by Iwatobi_Trash



Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Chance Meetings, College, Cute, First Meetings, Fluff, M/M, Meet-Cute, Slice of Life, Slow Burn, SouMako - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-21 16:54:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3699938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iwatobi_Trash/pseuds/Iwatobi_Trash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tachibana Makoto is in his third year at University when he takes a night class for the first time. He realizes that walking alone to his car in the dark isn't his strong suit and decides to take a chance on utilizing the Campus Escort Services. Enter a grump with teal eyes and Makoto's nights start looking a lot different than before...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where the Sun Ends

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't had the urge to write fanfiction in years, but these two doofuses sparked an idea that had been nagging at my brain for a while now, so I decided to take a risk and write it out! I've never written fic for an anime, but there really is a first time for everything, I guess.
> 
>  **SPECIAL THANKS:** To [lucycantdance](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lucycantdance/pseuds/lucycantdance) for supporting this story before she even knew what it was about or whether my writing was worth her time, and for inadvertently beta-ing this chapter and taking on the role of my champion. Girl, you rock more than words can say. Thank you!

_People don't just have **teal** eyes_ , Makoto thinks after a lone set of approaching footfalls beckons his eyes upwards.

            For a moment he wonders if the fading light is playing tricks on him—wonders if staring at the grey canvas of his sneakers for the past twenty minutes has marred his ability to perceive color. But even as he shoots off a rapid-fire pattern of blinks—which he's sure makes him look like even more of an idiot than usual—the color of the stranger's eyes refuses to ebb from teal to something that would make sense—blue, brown, hazel—and they remain stubborn canvases of sea green.

  
            The skin around those pools of teal tightens after a few long seconds. "Do you have something in your eyes?"

  
            His voice is gruff, as if his throat is mining rivulets of iron straight from the core of the earth through the roots of his feet—like it's branching through his veins and fortifying his skin. The deep warmth of it washes over Makoto, who feels every last word vibrating through his fingertips and the bridge of his nose and his teeth.

  
            Makoto regains himself—or tries to, at least. "Wh—No!" His hands have flown up as a barrier between them—a marionette's limbs yanked by invisible strings. When did that happen? "No! I'm just...I have...It's been a long day?" Nerves coax his voice upwards at the end, turning his defense into a question. He hopes the stranger won't call him on it.

  
            "Oh," is the only reply. The word hangs between them long enough for it to marry, procreate, and raise its offspring to adulthood. "My name is Yamazaki Sousuke, by the way," the guy says. His hands sink into his pockets like the fabric of his jeans is quicksand.

  
            "Yamazaki-san," Makoto repeats. He realizes he likes the way the syllables dance around his tongue. "Tachibana Makoto," he says, holding a hand to his chest and lowering into a slight bow. Embarrassed, he questions what it is about strangers that always yanks a bizarre air of formality out of him.

  
            There's a pause as neither knows quite what to say, and Makoto begins to feel the grime of an eight-hour school day slathered across his skin. He'd been okay with it before, but now he feels gross. In his mind, he sizes up Yamazaki, taking in the blaringly bright yellow polo shirt clutching his mountain-range shoulders. The color is so jarring that Makoto vaguely wonders if the shirt has left any stray pigments for the rest of the world or if it's swallowed them all whole.

  
            The guy before him looks clean and rested—though mildly irritated, if the clench of his jaw is any indicator—and Makoto imagines the fumes rising off his own body. He's suddenly aware that the traces of his late lunch have leeched into his teeth and settled across his tongue—that his left pant leg is riding up above his sneaker in a weird way, that he's wearing one of those shirts that fits nicely in the morning and has stretched out and sprouted wrinkles by the end of the day, that patches of sweat have cropped up underneath his arms and beneath the straps of his backpack, that he should've gone to the bathroom right after his evening lecture if he knew that he had a 30-minute drive home. His hair is limp and sticking to the back of his neck, his throat is dry, and his right shoelace feels like it's coming undone. He's in a state that he doesn't even like seeing himself in.

  
            "So..." Yamazaki ventures. "Should we do this?"

  
            "Ah!" Makoto starts. He offers an apologetic smile. "Yes! Sorry. I've never done this before."

  
            By "this" he means utilizing the Campus Escort Services. Evidently, there is a group of students whose collective mission is to make sure every student gets to their car safely at night. After three years of university, Makoto has somehow avoided evening classes entirely and has never even thought about making the mile-long trek from campus to Lot 42 alone in the dark. Until tonight.

  
            He always used to chuckle to himself when passing the cheesy posters blanketing the bulletin boards in the hallways—the ones with the open-mouthed, ambiguously-aged students grinning from ear to ear, sporting the yellow polo Yamazaki is wearing now. In big, blocky characters across the top, the posters beg the passing students, "Don't walk to your car in the dark! Call the Campus Escort Services! Safety First!" Their slogan is stamped across the bottom: "Just look for the friendly faces in the yellow shirts!!" Makoto always shakes his head at the candid amount of exclamation marks and the grins gracing the models' faces—closer in relation to grimaces than authentic smiles on the family tree—but he had programmed the number into his cell, just in case. Doing things "just in case" is embedded in his genetic code.

  
            It was easy enough to laugh about it in broad daylight, but when his last class on Friday night let out and he saw that the dark veil of night had draped itself over the familiar campus, he immediately paged through his contacts until "Yellow Shirts" was highlighted.

  
            He had thought there'd be a spiffy golf cart or a school-sanctioned van with the university logo blazing on the side involved in the escort services, but it turns out there is only a tall boy whose teal eyes are engaging in a war with his sunshine yellow shirt—armed with nothing but a palm-sized flashlight and a prickly attitude. It seems Makoto will still have to hike out to his car, dragging the aching soles of his feet the entire mile. But now he has to do it with a complete stranger who looks like his own day has been just as exhausting as Makoto's. Great.

  
            _Friendly faces in the yellow shirts, my **foot** ,_ Makoto grumbles inwardly.

  
            "Where you headed?" Yamazaki asks.

  
            "Uh, Lot 42," Makoto confesses. The guy groans and scuffs his sneakers against the ground.

  
            " _God_ ," he hears the guy mutter. "It can never be a graduate student in Lot 3 or Lot 1, two minutes off campus." Makoto bites his lip and slides his thumbs under the straps of his backpacks, unsure if this rant warrants a response. Was he even supposed to hear that? "Well, I guess we better start walking to No Man's Land if I want to get back to headquarters by sun up." The inflection of Yamazaki's voice doesn't change, but the sarcasm settles like dust on Makoto's chest. The guy sets off towards the furthest parking lot without another word.

  
            Makoto jogs after him to catch up, but quickly settles into Yamazaki's long, relaxed stride after a minute or two. "So, uh, how did you come to work for the CES?"

  
            "I applied."

  
            Makoto hums, as if this curt answer satisfies him. "I see."

  
            Subsidized apartments line either side of the street leading away from the University. Jammed rows of compact cars stand vigil against the curb—parked so close that Makoto wonders if even a stray breath could work its way between them. Many of the lamps in the apartment windows have already winked out, and the dim pools of light marking the space between lamp posts fade in and out, as if they're fighting to maintain consciousness themselves. Makoto blushes as he and Yamazaki pass the entranceway to one of the apartment complexes where a young couple seem to be exhibiting an inability to tear their lips from one another. He forces his eyes away after catching sight of the girl chasing the boy's kisses with her tongue. Cheeks blazing, he falls slightly behind Yamazaki as they approach the next lamp post. They're both so big that they can't fit shoulder-to-shoulder where the sidewalk bottlenecks.

  
            "Look, don't make a big deal out of it," Yamazaki bursts out, as if Makoto's content silence offends him. Makoto briefly wonders if he's referring to the affectionate couple, but realizes that Yamazaki's mind is still stuck on his last comment about his job. "My parents agreed to help pay my tuition on the condition that I got a job on campus," he concedes. "It was either this or working in the dining hall." His jaw locks and he huffs. "And I don't do well bussing tables. Or preparing food. Or...interacting with humans." He keeps his eyes locked straight ahead, as if he can see Lot 42 on the horizon, but Makoto knows they're still a good twenty minutes away. "And aprons, uh, piss me off."

  
            Choking back a laugh, Makoto ignores this last admission. "Walking students back to their cars seems like it involves talking from time to time," he points out. "We're humans. And we're interacting. Right now."

  
            "And I'd really rather we weren't." Their conversation peters out, succumbing to the glancing grace-notes of their rubber soles beating the concrete. Yamazaki tilts his head back and lets out a long sigh. His breath coalesces into a short-lived cloud. "The girls never talk to me," he tells Makoto. Or maybe he's talking to the sky and Makoto just happens to be there. "They just greet me and then pull out their phones and text the entire way to their car. Or they call someone to talk as we walk." There's a lot of nodding on Makoto's part. "You're not a girl," Yamazaki accuses.

  
            "N-No," Makoto splutters. "I'm not."

  
            "Escort Services never get calls from guys." There are teal eyes berating Makoto's arms and chest, prodding as if to find where he's hidden his logic. "You're pretty built. You seem like you can look after yourself. Why call?"

  
            "Eh? Does it matter?" Blood rushes to color Makoto's cheeks.

            "Just curious."

            "Normally, I'd walk to my own car without complaint. I actually like the time it gives me to think," Makoto admits. "But I'm, uh, not a night person, to say the least. There have been a lot of reports of assault and robberies near Lot 42 recently—especially at night. I didn't want to chance it." His fingers methodically trace the hem of his shirt. "Plus, I didn't realize how empty the campus would be tonight," he adds. "Usually there are big crowds heading to and from the parking lot, which is fine, but tonight there's no one. It's...eerie," he finishes.

  
            "Dude, it's a Friday night. Who takes classes on a Friday night?"

              
            "Students who want to graduate on time," Makoto fires back.

  
            "Hmm."

  
            "And I really don't want to get robbed because I'm alone. I'm seriously broke as it is."

  
            Yamazaki snorts, as if robbers are nothing more than a myth, but says nothing.

  
            "You didn't see the emails Campus Police sent out about the last reported incident?" Makoto demands. "This guy was walking to his apartment on the street just past Lot 42 and, out of nowhere, he feels this basketball hit the back of his knees." Seeing Yamazaki turn slightly in his direction, he barrels on. "So what does he do? Well, he bends to pick it up and toss it back to the owner, and the group of guys behind him were banking on his politeness, right? So when he bends to pick up the ball, they jump him and force him to give them his wallet at knife-point—right after they beat him to a pulp. The police said the victim was hospitalized with minor knife wounds. They didn't even get his wallet back!" When Makoto reaches the end of his story, he realizes he's all worked up and his hands are hanging in the air again in some hopeless gesture, as if the cruelness of the world is beyond him. He drops his hands to his sides abruptly and his palms slap against his thighs. Logically, he knows that he'll never see this guy again after tonight, but he can't stop himself from feeling like a freak of nature every two seconds.

  
            A car whizzes towards them on the street, heading in the opposite direction. Loud music clambers out of the open windows and crashes down onto the asphalt. The resulting roar crescendos as it nears them and then fades away as the car drives on.

  
            After a minute, Yamazaki turns back to Makoto. "I still say you could take on anyone who tries to bully you out of your wallet."

  
            "Ah, I'm more of the passive-aggressive type," Makoto admits. "I'm big on communication. But I have a feeling people like that aren't up for a heart-to-heart."

  
            "Communication," Yamazaki echoes.

  
            Makoto feels the urge to fill the silence now that he's spoken so much. "Yeah. Are you familiar with the whole 'I feel...when you...because' method?"

  
            Yamazaki's answering stare is as heavy as a rotten log.

  
            "I learned it in a communications course," Makoto hurries to explain. "It's a method of diffusing high-tension arguments without laying blame on either party."

  
            "Of course," Yamazaki answers, as if this were completely obvious.

  
            Smiling to himself, Makoto thinks about how many times he's had to use this exact method on Haru. (" _Haru-chan, I feel less like a friend and more like a babysitter when you strip down to your swimsuit in public and I have to beg you to put your clothes on, because we're twenty-one years old and you should know better by now."_ ) True, it doesn't solve much, but it does help them avoid yelling at one another—or engaging in a staring contest so intense that birds nesting in nearby trees take spontaneous flight, desperate to seek safer ground. 

  
            He hikes his backpack further up his shoulders. "So what's the point in Campus Escort Services if we still have to walk all this way?" he asks, voicing his earlier confusion. "I mean, what does a guy have to do to score one of those fancy campus golf carts?"

  
            "Be anyone but me," Yamazaki huffs.

 

            Makoto wonders what that could possibly mean. "Is it an issue of liability? The school doesn't want to be responsible if student drivers get into an accident?"

  
            "...Sure."

  
            The tense quiet between them blooms. Makoto wilts with each step.

  
            "Okay," he perks back up. "But what's the difference between the two of us really? I mean, we're about the same height, same type of build. Why should I feel better walking with you? What do you have that I don't?"

  
            Yamazaki gestures to his left hip. "I have a walkie-talkie."

  
            "A walkie-talkie," Makoto repeats. He tries not to let an incredulous tone seep into his words, but knows almost immediately that he's failed.

  
            "And a flashlight."

  
            "So you can _blind_ any suspicious-looking people to death?"

  
            Yamazaki erupts in an unexpected laugh. It bubbles out of his throat, brimming over when it reaches his lips. It's rich—it has its own texture. It's nice. Makoto doesn't know why, but somehow, knowing that he's earned this stranger's laugh makes him light up from the inside. A million fireflies line the fabric of his lungs.

  
            "I've never had to use my flashlight as a weapon, Tachibana-san," Yamazaki tells him, voice still skipping from his chuckling, "But the next time I spot a suspicious person while I'm on-duty, I'll give it a try."

  
            Makoto's struck by a sudden thought. "Have you ever had an...an incident, Yamazaki-san?"

  
            "Just Yamazaki's, fine," the other boy insists. "I will not hesitate to use this if you don't cut the – _san_ shit," he says, wiggling the flashlight in Makoto's direction. "I mean it."

  
            "Okay. Have you ever had an incident, Just Yamazaki?"

  
            A smirk cracks Yamazaki's face at that. "Ah, no. Nothing exciting for me. I just get saddled with all this damn walking."

  
            "Are there any girls who escort people back to their cars, too?"

  
            "What? Oh, yeah. I have female co-workers. I mean, as long as you can use a walkie-talkie, you're pretty much in."

  
            Makoto hums thoughtfully. "I don't know," he finally says. "Campus Escort Services just assigns someone to walk you back to your car and gives that person a walkie-talkie. I'm not seeing how this actually makes the process of walking back to your car any safer."

  
            "Hey, don't get smart," Yamazaki warns. His weaves his fingers together and hoists his arms to settle them behind his head. Makoto hears a slight hiss slip from between his teeth, but it camouflages itself quickly with all the other tiny noises peppering the sidewalks at this hour. "I don't make the rules; I just need to pay for school. And it's called safety in numbers—ever heard of it?"

  
            "If I were a serial killer, I wouldn't be deterred by an extra body," Makoto postulates softly. To his own ears, it sounds like he's working out a math problem aloud. "If I planned to axe one person, what difference would murdering another person be to me? Two for the price of one, right?"

  
            When he hears no reply, he turns to look at Yamazaki, who's simply staring at him. "Why...would you think that through?!" he finally blurts.

  
            "Ah! Sorry!" Makoto quickly apologizes. "That must've sounded...really weird! I just came from a Psych lecture," he admits. Clearly this explanation isn't working for Sousuke, whose face distorts into a small frown.

  
            "Yeah, and?"

  
            "Well, my professor works part-time at a mental facility for the criminally insane." The smile pasted on his face feels distinctly out of place. It dissolves in a matter of seconds beneath the incredulous look Yamazaki's pins him with. Makoto hastens to explain. "He tells us a lot of stories about the inmates he oversees when he lectures. He even made a girl faint once with the amount of detail...Anyway, I must be channeling him, I guess." His nervous laugh flutters. He doesn't want to admit that his professor's colorful stories might have freaked him out a little more than usual tonight, which may or may not be part of why he called on Campus Escort Services in the first place.

  
            "Man," Yamazaki groans. "All my Psych professor did was drone on and on about the frontal lobe and the amygdala—whatever those are."

  
            "Those are important, too!"

  
            Yamazaki shrugs. "I'd rather hear first-hand accounts about mass murderers."

  
            "Well, nothing about his stories ever comes up on the exams, but they sure take up a lot of his lectures," Makoto laments.

  
            "Still."

  
            Makoto chuckles before agreeing. "Yeah, still." He shoves his hands deep in his pockets.

  
            They're so far away from the University now that the campus seems like nothing more than a hazy memory. Even the rows and rows of student apartments have fallen far behind them. They make their way past a vacant park.

            The last stretch of sidewalk before the parking lot dips under a freeway overpass, and the pathway is completely obscured by darkness. No lamp posts here. Yamazaki clicks on the flashlight, scoffing in Makoto's direction.

            "And you made fun of the flashlight. Comes in handy, doesn't it?"

  
            "I never said it wouldn't!" Makoto grinds his teeth together and mutters, "I don't see why there's no light here in the first place."

  
            "It's not a problem during the daytime," Yamazaki muses, keeping his flashlight leveled at the height of his eyes, like he's fantasizing about being on one of those cop shows.

            Makoto whimpers, mostly to himself. "Things can't hide in the _daytime_."

  
            They're in the middle of easing down the sloping path, black air invading every crevice around them, when Yamazaki turns his flashlight around on Makoto. "You're actually afraid," he states.

  
            "Yamazaki-san!" Makoto shouts, forgetting that he already agreed to drop the honorific. "Keep the light ahead. It's pitch black under here!" He throws up his forearm to shield his eyes from the artificial glare, but he can already see a plum blotch floating in his field of vision.

  
            "You're afraid of the dark."

  
            "I'm not _afraid_ ," Makoto counters, bunching his hands into fists. "I'm _concerned_...about people who might _operate_ in the dark."

  
            Yamazaki blinks a few times in his direction, showing that he isn't convinced in the slightest by Makoto's excuses. Then he swivels back in the direction of the parking lot and continues trudging on, one thumb tucked in his pocket.

            "It can never be a graduate student," he hears Yamazaki softly griping again from up ahead. "I have to get landed with the two-meter-high, passive-aggressive guy who's _concerned about people who operate in the dark._ "  
            

            "Hey!" Despite his denials about being afraid, Makoto is jogging to keep up again.

            They're right under the freeway now and every few seconds Makoto feels convinced that something is lurking just beyond the radius of Yamazaki's flashlight beam. Did he just hear something move behind him? Was it his foot that kicked that rock skittering along the cement or was it someone else's? His shoulders stiffen as he fights the urge to turn around and look. He is not going to be that person, he is not going to be that person...

  
            "Tachibana-san," Yamazaki sighs, " _Relax_. It's my job to make sure you make it back to your car. And letting you get killed would look really bad on my report. I'm not looking to get fired."

  
            A gust of air bustles free of Makoto's oppressive lungs. He's feeling a bit calmer when it hits him that Yamazaki's teasing him. He squints at the back of Yamazaki's yellow polo. "You know, making fun of your patrons is not very good customer service," he points out.

  
            A languid shrug rolls off Yamazaki like a wave. "I told you I'm not the best at interacting with humans."

  
            They're finally hiking uphill and back into the moonlight. With another staccato click, Yamazaki extinguishes the flashlight. The first row of cars in the parking lot breaks on the horizon.

  
            " _God_ , I thought we'd never get here," Yamazaki announces as they approach the final crosswalk. "After this I have to walk all the way _back_ , too."

  
            Makoto nods before adding, "Alone."

  
            "I don't need your commentary," Yamazaki deadpans. He leans his back against the button for the crosswalk, keeping it pressed down beneath his weight.

  
            Makoto's usually the type of person who just keeps pressing the button every few seconds, scared that the device hasn't picked up his request the first ten million times—that it won't register his existence. Sometimes he has dreams about standing on a the corner of a sidewalk for all eternity, waiting for the icon on the other side of the street to change as crowds course around him, but it never does. Yamazaki, on the other hand, expresses no such anxiety, slouching against the button with his eyes closed, as if the crosswalk light owes it to him to change.

  
            Even though no cars are surging past at the moment, it takes a long while for the red icon to change. When it finally does, Makoto hurries across the street, not wanting to get in the way in case any car approaches. Yamazaki lingers against the post for a moment longer before plodding along behind him. Makoto makes it to the opposite curb first, and when he looks back, he sees Yamazaki carefully placing a foot on each white stripe, like he has all the time to kill in the world. Behind him, the crosswalk icon is flashing red again, but the street remains silent, save for the echo of Yamazaki's sneakers grazing the concrete.

  
            When he finally makes it all the way across, Makoto tells him, "I can make it to my car from here, you don't have to waste anymore of your time. I'm sure other people need to get to their cars, too."

  
            Yamazaki gives his head a weary shake. "What part of 'It's my job to make sure you get back to your car' don't you understand? I thought you were familiar with a little thing called ' _liability_ ,' Tachibana-san."

  
            "Yeah, but who would know?"

  
            "I would know, _idiot_ ," Yamazaki responds. His fingers clench as if he has to resist smacking Makoto on the back of the head. "Not looking to get fired, remember? With your luck, you'd get jumped in the two feet between here and your car."

  
            "Aha," Makoto begins nervously, separating the sweat-crusted strands of hair at the back of his neck with his nails. "About that...I'm parked towards the back."

  
            Yamazaki's hand flies to his mouth and he makes a fist, squishing his lips together. He breathes deeply through his nose and closes his eyes, as if imploring the Gods for strength. "This night just keeps getting better and better." But he's already marching towards the far end of the lot anyway.

  
            Makoto follows the bob of his yellow shirt.

  
            "It's not like I was doing much of anything back at headquarters anyway," Yamazaki confides to the nearest row of cars. "Before you called, they were going to make me staple posters in the Humanities building."

  
            Makoto has to clamp a hand over his own mouth. He masks his strangled laugh as a coughing fit. "You mean _you're_ the one who puts up all those posters in the hallways?"

  
            " _Just look for the friendly faces in the yellow shirts!_ " Yamazaki recites, flashing Makoto a cheesy smile so wide it threatens to split his jaw right in half. He grows somber again as Makoto lips quiver from the laughter he's fighting. "Yeah, plastering those up is all me. No one else can reach the top of the bulletin boards."

  
            There's no hiding Makoto's light snickering now. "God, I hate those posters," he admits.

  
            "Oh, they're the worst."

  
            "How can you live with yourself, knowing you're partially responsible for those eyesores?" Makoto teases.

  
            "The bi-weekly paychecks soothe my bruised ego."

  
            "Ha." They slow as they reach the last row, completely deserted except for Makoto's car, which he realizes with a start is desperately in need of a good wash. He rushes forward in a futile attempt to shield the dusty windows and fossilized bird droppings from Yamazaki's sight by placing himself between his peer and the car. "Well, this is me."

  
            "Last car left in the row," Yamazaki observes, announcing it as if he thinks himself incredibly shrewd. "Figures."

  
            Makoto pulls his keys out of his pocket and walks up to the driver-side door. With the push of a button, his headlights flash twice and a sharp beep signals the doors unlocking themselves. He pulls the door open and shimmies one strap of his backpack down his arm then the other, tossing the bag into the passenger-side seat. The notebooks and textbooks inside rustle as it lands.

  
            Before getting into the car, he looks up once more at his escort to see Yamazaki standing where he left him, hands buried in the back pockets of his jeans. He shifts his weight from one foot to another, as if he doesn't know how to go about retreating back to campus.

  
            "Well, thanks for walking me to my car," Makoto tells him, flashing a nimble smile. "See? I made it. You're off the hook now."

  
            "Yeah," Yamazaki agrees.

  
            "I could give you a ride and drop you off closer to campus before turning around to go home," Makoto offers. "It's the least I can do, really."

  
            "Nah." Makoto realizes the pang rippling behind the spokes of his ribs is something like disappointment. "Walking is good for you, you know. Gives you time to think." Yamazaki taps the side of his head with a lithe finger.

  
            "Well, okay," Makoto concedes. "Have a good night."

  
            "Yeah, you too." Yamazaki gives a quick wave and then he's walking away, the violent hue of his yellow shirt fading as he carves his way through the night.

  
            Makoto bends down to sit in the driver's seat, pulling the door shut behind him. His shirt's sticking to his back and his legs are throbbing from the long walk despite their easy pace. He rests his forehead on the center of the steering wheel, listening to the harshness of his breathing ebb away. After a few long moments, he sits up and looks into the rearview mirror, but Yamazaki is already out of sight.

  
            He knows even if he calls Campus Escort Services again next week at the same time, the chances of Yamazaki Sousuke being assigned to walk with him a second time are slim to none. He wonders why the logic of the realization causes his heart to hunch over in his chest.

  
            With a flick of his wrist, the headlights blare to life. Turning the key in the ignition, the engine turns over a few times before catching. Makoto lets the car hum to life for a few seconds before coaxing it into reverse and slithering out of his parking space. He maneuvers slowly through the spacious parking lot, making his way back to the main street. The lot deposits him near the crosswalk he and Yamazaki had to pass through.

  
            He has to turn right to head to the highway that will take him back to his and Haru's apartment, but since there's no traffic bullying him forward, he sits at a stop for a moment.

  
            Leaning forward and squinting through his grimy windshield, Makoto thinks he can make out Yamazaki's form receding beneath the freeway overpass. This time, however, he doesn't turn on his flashlight, and plunges straight into the darkness with no hesitation.

**Author's Note:**

> I thought I'd leave this open-ended so if I feel like adding more to it in the future, I can! Of course, I'm busy with my own school work and writing, so finding time to write fic can be tricky! I'd like to think there will eventually be more chapters, though. Let me know what you thought and THANK YOU for reading °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°


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